Linking pedagogy and assesment practices Research Paper

Linking pedagogy and assesment practices - Research Paper Example These skills also enhance the students’ ability to arrive at judgments and decisions as well as giving them the ability to transfer skills to novel situations (Chun, 2010). The best way to assess these skills is by use of Collegiate Learning Assessments. According to Pike (2011), Collegiate Learning Assessment requires students to produce artifacts that are evaluated using a set of scoring rubrics. These assessments make use of performance tasks in making the students to produce these artifacts. This assessment also involves creating of rubrics that assist in assigning scores to the artifacts produced by students and helps the students in the production of these artifacts. So far, this method has been proven effective in testing and developing these skills by the learning institutions that have already started to practice it. In evaluating the effectiveness of Collegiate Learning Assessment, we have to consider what it has achieved and what it has failed to achieve. According to Chun (2010), the performance tasks used in these assessment are of high quality since a good level of expertise and time investment are employed while building each one of them. This ensures that they are in line with the set assessment goals and that they are shaped to deriver sufficient information about the skills they assess. Moreover, according to Chun (2010), the performance tasks are based on the learning outcomes that students are expected to attain. Thus, this assessment reveals these learning outcomes. based on the students artifacts rather than test scores. Artifacts are more effective due to their ability to incorporate high level thinking as compared to test scores and hence they make this assessment to be more effective. The process of making Collegiate Learning Assessment tests involves numerous rounds of field testing, revision and calibration (Chun, 2010). This makes this assessment perfectly suited to deliver the best outcome possible for the skills assessed. It also helped in ensuring that this assessment is tailored towards ensuring that the artifacts can measure the level if the skills assessed are in the most accurate way possible. This has actually made this kind of assessment to be very effective in the achieving of assessment goals. However, the responses obtained from Collegiate Learning Assessments are long and complex with a wide range of possible scores (Hardison & Vilamovska, 2009). This makes them very complicated to administer and very difficult to analyze. As a result, they require a high degree of skills and proficiency among the assessors. It also requires high degree of commitment and dedication of both the assessors and the students. If it lacks this it can fail to achieve the objectives intended thus becoming ineffective. Another way in which pedagogical practice can be aligned with assessment tools is through involving students in the designing of those assessment tools. Some of the tools in which students can